Making Every Kid Both Math-Competent and Math-Confident

Nurturing a growth mindset and motivation will catalyze student learning.

I recently helped my daughter with her geometry homework, working on items like transversals, and to no surprise, I found it hard to wrestle with long-forgotten math concepts. I could barely spell transversals, let alone explain the concept to my child.

The struggles of teaching math go far beyond my personal experience. Recently, math scores on the National Assessment of Education Progress test dropped to a level not seen in 20 years. Where’s the bottom? Will we ever bridge the gap for students who are struggling?

In 2018, I started the Learning Agency, an organization devoted to the science of learning. This has given me a ringside seat for a number of innovations in the field of education, and for a few years, I’ve been working with Cristina Heffernan, co-founder of ASSISTments. I’ve found her approach to math learning and teaching to be particularly insightful and encouraging.

Heffernan always emphasizes that teachers can make every kid both math-competent and math-confident. This is certainly reassuring to parents, but more importantly, it illuminates why we need to invest in teacher-student relationships, especially in math classrooms.

Read the full article by Ulrich Boser in Psychology Today to learn more about adopting a growth mindset in classrooms, and how teachers are leveraging ASSISTments to practice differentiation and personalize instruction.